Whose Opinion Is It Really?

As we have discussed in class, the “doublespeak” George Orwell wrote about in his novel “1984” is still alive and well in this country. We mentioned the most well know example, the fact that the War Department is now the Department of Defense.

After reading the pieces The Nation in a Room, Best Estimates, 20 Questions Journalists Should Ask About Poll Results and Tomgram: Schwartz on polling as a political narcotic, I realized another term that is disguised in a nicer name: PUBLIC OPINION POLLING. These polls are being conducted on a daily basis by organizations, companies and political candidates around the world, but how accurately they actually reflect public opinion can be debated.

Take this poll, conducted by CNN and posted on the Roper Center’s website. Taken at face value, the poll indicates that as of October 6th, a short 20 days ago, a majority of the country believes that the war in Iraq has made the country less safe from terrorism.

The poll asked: Do you think the war with Iraq has made the US (United States) safer or less safe from terrorism?

36% of people said safer, 53% said less safe, 7% said no change and 4% said no opinion.

Yet, like most things, the results of this poll cannot be taken at face value. The first thing to note is who's doing the asking. CNN is considered a more liberal television station so these results fit perfectly with the agenda they may be trying to promote. Because 53% of the people they asked think this country has gotten less safe since Iraq was invaded, they can now perhaps claim that the country is unhappy with the war and the President.

But, referring back to the premise of this post, is this really the public's opinion? First off, all we are told is that this poll was done by telephone. Over 1000 people were polled and these were the results. Normally this would mean that CNN asked a significant amount of people, enough to gauge public opinion, and that the expected margin of error would be low. Yet, we are not informed as to how the people called were chosen, the population they were chosen from, and if everyone they called was home and responded. Did the pollers call over 1000 people or did over 1000 people respond? Did they coerce the people they wanted to answer to answer by being extremely persistent or was participation voluntary, and they just used the responses of the first 1000 people they randomly called. Were the people asked representative of the whole country or did they come from a specific age group, political party or geographic region? This makes a difference when attempting to determine how accurate and scientific the results are.

The second issue with this poll is the question. By phrasing the question in the way they did, CNN infused certain biases into the response. It has been proven that despite what President Bush has claimed, Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11th and the terrible acts of terror that were inflicted on the United States when four planes were hijacked by members of Al Qaeda and crashed in various parts of the country. However, this query into public opinion may imply the opposite. By putting the phrase "war in Iraq" in a sentence together with terrorism, people may begin to think of the two issues as interconnected and that one affects the other. If they think the war in Iraq is going badly, which many liberals who trust CNN for news do, they may assume that the threat of terrorism has increased.

According to this poll 53% of the country believes America was safer from terrorism before the war in Iraq. This may be true. Unfortunately though, based exclusively on these poll results, one cannot be sure. While this poll was conducted to get a sense of how the public views the current terrorist threat and it's relation to the war in Iraq, it brings about more questions than it answers.